TS Page 4 EDITORIAL Tell It Straight The Luzerne County Commissioners quickly dis- missed the idea of a county-wide library system. This means that those areas without any library service and those occasionally served by a book- mobile, with its limitations, will continue to have limited access to the near-necessity of a library. Frank Wideman, chairman of the commission- ers, publicly gave two basic reasons for scrubbing the idea. He claimed that the county, full of finan- cially-troubled flood-victims, could not put up with additional taxes, which the chairman implied the program would entail. He also argued that the county’s money would be better spent on its elder- ly. ¢ We would like to point out to the commission chairman that the Inter-Library Task Force, re- searchers of and advocates for the county-wide lib- rary service, did not intend for the money to come from taxes, as Mr. Wideman should have known, but from revenue sharing money. Mr. Wideman had a reason, or reasons, for not accepting the idea of library service for everyone in Luzerne County, or he wouldn’t have been so quick to brush off the Inter-Library Task Force's request. Those reasons are what he owes the voters of Luzerne County. Arguing his concern over an additional tax bur- den, when the Task Force’s well-prepared proposal called for no taxation, is deceitful. Arguing concern for the elderly without giving consideration to the fact that the elderly need library service too is either foolish, or again deceitful. ° Say It Ain’t So John Dean’s testimony, that President Nixon knew of the Watergate cover-up as early as last September, required a quick reply. Faith in the President and faith in the state of the nation demanded it. It should have come almost immedi- ately from Mr. Nixon; but it didn’t. The presidential statement, through Ron Ziegler, that Mr. Nixon will speak on Watergate ‘in an appropriate forum’ after the Senate Watergate committee has concluded the current phase of investigation, does not help. A public announce- ment, right after the charge was made, direct from the President, in answer to Mr. Dean’s charges might have helped. A press conference might help. Mr. Nixon’s appearance before the Senate Water- gate committee or before the federal grand jury probing the scandal could help. What more ap- propriate forum then a Congressional Committee does he hope to find. But the President has flatly refused to do the latter two things, has not held a press conference since March 15, and made his last public statement on Watergate in May. Why ? The American people deserve an answer to Mr. Dean’s allegations. They deserve a President that they can believe in now, not a month from now. Mr. Nixon, by waiting until all evidence is in before commenting, is leaving himself open to the suspicions of some, perhaps very many, that he is waiting to see just what he has to admit to, and what he doesn’t have to answer for. That he is waiting to organize an answer, after all investi- gation is over, so that his answer will then not be subject to any cross-examination, from the Senate committee, at least. The President’s four-month refusal to call the up- to-now periodic press conference is another source of consternation that he should bring to a quick end. He should submit himself to the questions of the press without the usual practice of submitting written questions well in advance. Only in this manner can he show America that he has all the right answers to all the hard questions. We need to know more about the Watergate scandal from our President besides that he refuses to appear before the grand jury because it wouldn’t be constitutionally appropriate. Would it not be morally appropriate to let the people who elected him, and whom he represents, know that he has nothing to fear from the Watergate investigation? We need more regarding the Watergate from Mr. Nixon than a silly refusal to appear before the Senate Watergate Committee on the grounds that, as Mr. Ziegler put it for him, ‘he feels he has the responsibility to maintain the perogatives of the executive branch.’”’ Mr. Lincoln didn’t feel that way ‘and appeared before congressional committees, as have other presidents since then. What did he say? When will he say nore? America awaits answers that only their President can make. His continued refusal to make a clear and candid response may hurt the country far more than impeachment proceedings. : Capital Notes by William Ecenbarger Several years ago the coeds living in a new dormitory at Edinboro State college in Erie County complained they didn’t have enough hot water to fulfill their daily needs. «Leaping chivalrously to the rescue was the Legislative Budget and Finance Com- mittee. better known as the ‘Watchdog Committee’ —although no one in the know in Harrisburg can call it that with a straight face. After exhaustive study. the committee concluded that) indeed. there wasn’t enough hot water: 2) the boiler capacily was insuff- icient: and 3) the boiler capacity ought to be increased. Such is the myopic vision of the Watchdog Commitiee. which was set up by the Legisla- ure in 1959 to serve as a guardian of the billions of dollars in taxpayer money annually iurned over to state bureaucrats. I' has never come close to fulfilling that mission. and now. somewhat belatedly. the Watchdog is in some hot water of its own. A bipartisan group of legislators. fed up with its inconsequential bumbling in the face of ever larger state budgets. wants a new watchdog that will growl and bite like it’s supposed to. It ought to be patterned after the U.S. Congress’ watchdog. the General Accounting Office. which regularly and vigorously catalogs the fiscal transgressions of Washing- ion bureaucrats. : Since it was created a half-century ago. the GAO steadily has expanded it influence while establishing a solid reputation for ac- curacy and bipartisanship. Its director (called the comptroller general) is appointed by the president for a 15-year term. The current occupant of that office has’ a doc- ioraie in public administration. and his pol- ities are not readily discernible. By contrast. the Harrisburg watchdog committee is a comfortable rest home for retired legislators and legislative hangers-on. Membership is a political reward. It has dual leadership. one co-director chosen by each TRB from Washington “I recall Liddy saying that the girls would be high class and the best in the business." witness John Dean told the Senate's Water- gaie panel. The girls—? They were to be im- ported into Miami Beach along with mugging squads and electronic experts, lo compromise ‘he di legates at the Democeraiic 1972 conven- ‘ion. The place” why. the plot was canvassed rand rejected) in the office of attorney gener- al John N. Mitchell. January 27, 1972; the building whose portal says. ‘‘the house of Jus- ‘ice is a hallowed place.” John: Mitchell will testify shortly before the Ervin committee. What Sherman Adams was 10 Jke. Mitehell was to Richard Nixon. He was the second most powerful man in the na- tion. the law-and-order man. He was brought in to end the ‘‘softness’’ of Ramsey Clark: the Justice Department was ‘‘an institution for law enforcement.” he said. “not social im- provement.” So he politicized il; made its offices home for GOP losers, lived in a $140,000 three bedroom duplex at $1000 a month in a new apartment called the Water- gate. I don’: want to kick a man when he’s down, and Mitchell is now under double in- dictmen{. Furthermore, a reporter tends to forget his anger in the sheer drama of the thing. Here's the man who never wanted to come lo Washington; who had no political ambitions; who was a multi-million dollar municipal bond advisor, a barefoot boy from Wall Street. Among the sycophants he had no awe of his former law partner, Mr. Nixon, and. would flatly contradict him. He gave advice, mostly bad. because he despised the poor and had a tin ear for America’s deeper rthymns. He kept pulling out losers, like Haynesworth and Carswell, but the President had an extra- ordinary affinity for him; two essentially pri- Rustlings by Russ Williams When are we going to see somebody ques- tioned in the Watergate investigation who isn’t so cool with his answers? It’s scary when two men say (wo opposite things, and they both convince you that they are telling the truth. It’s as if they are saying ‘How could I possibly be lying? I haven’t batted my eyelids for two minutes and my voice is so soft and calm that I'm putting people to sleep.” But one of them, or both is lying. I'd rather see a guy up there sweating and stuttering. I'd just know that he didn’t do anything wrong. He’s not cool enough. I'd rather see a guy who has to pause be- fore he can think of an answer. It’s frighten- ing the way some of these guys can think on their seat. I'd like to see that guy who pauses, also gel ‘caught in a little conflicting testimony. He'd be guilty, but not dangerous. He would just have been a guy out to make a dishonest buck who got caught at it. The cool guys don’t get caught in conflicts in testimony. None of them. But some of them are lying. Or all of them. The cool guys aren’t out after a dishonest buck. they're out for power. (Beware of yon Haldeman (?). he has a lean and hungry look.) The cool guys can look you almost right in the eye and say, “I did it because I believed that it was best for the national security and because I wanted to help My President’, and they belive it (almost). You have to almost believe a lie like that or you would have to just laugh right out in front of millions of TV view- The cool guys always do everything for ~~ political party—a system that guarantees not bipartisanship but stagnation.There is a staff of 12. evenly divided between the parties. The committee's work, what little there is of it. consists largely of compiling lists of phone numbers for various state depart- ments. pulting ils own cover on the documents of other agencies and making “‘fieldtrips’’ and ‘‘surveys’’ that never produce results. The commiltee is empowered lo hold hearings and subpoena witnesses—but neither has ever been done. Leading the current opposition to the watchdog is Sen. Franklin L. Kury (D., . Northumberland). who has introduced legis- Jation that would create a professional audiling staff to monitor effectively the spending of legislative appropriations by. the executive branch. “Without effective legislative controls and overview of execulive spending, there is TE TE a. ws Co. Publicati / 2 no check and balance between the (wo branches.’ says Kury. ‘And the harsh reality is that in this regard the Pennsylvania Legis- lature has been sadly delinquent.” The Legislative Budget and Finance Committee is a benign dog that’s had its day. This year the General Assembly will turn over some $6 billion in taxpayers’ money to bureaucrats. It ought to be proigfped with something that is—in the words of*a popular song—meaner than a junkyard dog. vale men. selfmade. successful. and Mr. Nixon had a need to lean on his granite self- assurance. 2 He had his first press conference January 21. 1969. in’ the Justice Department, and I have my notes: ‘‘Big. formidable. self-confi- dent. a kind of authoritarian self-righteous- ness. a certitude like the Eisenhower busi- nessmen who came to the Capitol believing ha by a flick of the wrist they could end New Deal laxity.” So 1 watched him— "ruled brows at right angles to a big Roman nose, poker face. slit eyes. like movie hero Bill Har's, an Old West’ law-and-order’ sheriff with pistols packed.” Now four years later we may be hearing the Wa ergate break-in story the third time, following the version of Jed Magruder and John Dean Mitchell's account of his templa- iion by G. Gordon Liddy. purveyor of ‘‘a broad-guaged intelligence plan.” Mitchell re- jected the first plan presented by Liddy with colored 6 X 11 feet charts. on an easel budge! - ed at a million dollars, with girls and thugs. Dean gives a sympathetic account of Mit- chell's reaction: ‘‘He was amazed. At one point I gave him a look of bewilderment and he winked. He took a few long puffs on his pipe and told Liddy the plan he had developed was not quite what he had in mind and the cost was oul of the question.” Liddy was back at Mitchell’s office a se- cond ‘ime: February 4. 1972. Magruder and Dean were again present. Cost, this time, half a million. Dean self-righteously says he broke it up. But Dean wasn’t there the third time. Magruder was and as he testified under oath _ the plan was scaled down to $250,000, with only “the wiretapping and photography pro- jects retained,” to be directed at the De- mocrats’ offices. No girls. : And Mitchell, the law-and-order man, ut- iered the fatal words. says Magruder. ‘Okay, lei’s give him a quarter of a million dollars with.” That triggered Watergate. The other man al the conference was Frederick LaRue, Mitchell's deputy, who has unexpectedly pleaded guilty on one count, and turned state's evidence. We haven't heard from him yet. The point is, though. that Watergate was not the beginning. it was the natural continua- tion of four years of legal corner-cutting by the Nixon-Mitehell team. It was a trend to- ward repression. bugging. no knock entry, preventive detention. subpeonaing of note- hooks from reporters, surveillance of dissi- dent political groups, intimidation, and al- ways wiretapping: always wiretapping. Here is what Mitchell said at Law Day at Roanoke in June, 1971: ‘‘Never in our history has this country been confronted with so many revolutionary elements determined to destroy by force the government and the so- ciety it stands for.” National security—it’s ihe same line the President takes. Mitchell compared the anti-war demonstrators of May. 1971 to ‘Hitler's Brown Shirts’’, he jus- tified sweep arrests; as he once said, ‘There is no dividing line between hostile foreign for- ces seeking (o undermine our internal secur- ity and hostile ‘domestic groups’ seeking the overthrow of our government.” If you wonder at Watergate, recall that ihis law-and-order attorney general claimed the astonishing right to wiretap the home of any American, without court authority, if sus- pecied of subversion. The shocked Supreme |, Court slapped him down on this, 8-0. It wasn’t the coming and going of burg- lars and wiretappers in Washington that crip- pled the presidency and threatens to destroy the Administration. it was the mood in the White House itself. It almost has to be des- cribed in medical terms. obsessive, suspi- cious. aloof, psychopathic. paranoid. Dean is contemptible in many ways but he seems au- thentic in depicting the atmosphere when he came lo the White House—excessive fears and suspicion. Dean’s mountainous accretion of circum- stantial detail in his testimony shook Wash- ington and made impeachment, for the first time. a respectable subject of conversation. told. 4 ) The Nixon administration fe a car parked beside the road with its di€iress hood up. The terrifying thing is that it’s our car. America’s car. with something ywgong in the engine. with an economic bust j® over the hill. a driver we don’t trust, and a mood of dis- illusionment over our international road map. What to do—? Send for Congress—? In a government keyed lo presidential authority some of the worst moments of American his- tory have come during periods of Congres- sional domination. We turn back to Mitchell. Some of his re- cent denials have been inexplicable: he has rejected known facts. He and Martha have seemed to threaten the President. Ehrlich- man and Colson were prepared to throw Mit- chell to the wolves and the strange statement of Nixon counsel Fred Buzhardt hinted at the same thing. Dean, by contrast, seemed to be conciliating Mitchell; they had a ‘‘father-son relationship’’. Which side will he IZ&d on? We come back to Mitchell's famous¥ine which has new meaning: “You will be better advis- ed to watch what we do instead of what we say. their own benefit. The cool guys don’t con- sider ‘‘national security’ or even ‘‘Mr. Pre- sident’’, until it comes time to find a good, honorable way of describing away greed and power-hunger, or a good honorable excuse. to themselves, for performing a greedy or power-hungry deed: This is how the cool guys can lie so well, and how they can sleep at night. They lie to themselves all the time, to keep any existing conscience in check. This solo lying is then good practice for lying before a group. It’s especially easy when what they are lying about is what they've already lied to them- selves about, if you know what I mean. (I do.) The Senate Watergate Committee's job is simply. and at the same time very ‘‘difficult- ly’. to find out which guys are the cool guys and lo figure out a way to stop that kind from gelling positions of so much power over us and our country. ® I predict that in the not-too-distant future. the once-a-week lawn mow will go the same route as the once-every-two-week hair cut. ? Why does grass have to be so short? It ain't natural. It might not even be humane. A field of waving grass has long been con- sidered an aesthetic sight by that authority on the beautiful. the poet. (Painting field after field of wind-blown grass kept Van Gogh from culling off his other ear, a reliable source told the Post the other day, as well.) But if it’s in your own front yard, every blade has to be exactly the same, very short, length. The closer the grass resembles a carpet, the more visitors will rave about the way you keep your lawn. And the more the neighbors ments. The unfortunate grasses try, day after day. week after week, to grow a little, to stretch their blades. But then along comes the “stunting machine’’, which is usually of the gas-gurgling variely, adding to the air pollu- tion as it puts all the little blades in order. The ones thal got out of control, growing faster than others, are cut down to the exact same size as that of their peers. Every two weeks, on a Saturday, the male population of the United States used to file into the barber shops for the head mow. Why? Because evervhody got their head mowed. Long hair looks weird, they knew. Bul now mos. used to the look of long hair on males. Ii uoesn’t look so bad to us they like long hair on men. And boy, can you save a lot of money by not going to the barber every two weeks, before the prom, and prior to the wedding or funeral! a Give long grass a chance. It might grow on you. (Yuk. yuk.) Barbers started the rumor that you have 10 have a haircut every two weeks or you'll be disowned by parents and girl friend, while thousands of brain cells die for every extra day you put it off. mower makers of the world. The barbers were proven wrong, it’s time for a brave few to test the lawnmower manu- facturers’ claims. “Afro”. Culling the grass is un-natural, silly, a waste of time, a lot of hard work. There is no reason why it has to be done, pial that often. Once a year with a dull scythe ought to satisfy the fussy. Like I said, culling the grass once a week is irrational, almost insanely so, but I none- theless predict that we will soon stop doing it anyway. per year. Call 675-5211 for subscriptions. The officers of Greenstreet News Co. are Edward president; and Doris Mallin, secretary-treasurer. Mrs. T. M. B. Hicks, editor Emeritus J. R. Freeman, managing editor Doris R. Mallin, editor Dan Koze, advertising manager Sylvia Cutler, advertising sales = TR PR es Prt _ Re ee =
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